How I Made an Animated Billboard for my Lumibricks Cyberpunk City (Part Two)

 

Hey brick fans, welcome back!

This is the second part of my mini tutorial on how I made an animated billboard for my Lumibricks Cyberpunk city.   If you missed the first part of the tutorial, you can find it here: https://bricksandfigs.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-i-made-animated-ai-billboard-for-my.html.

In my previous blog post, we looked at image and video generation using the free AI tools like Dreamina and Canva.  At this point, I have the saved video as an mp4 format file on my laptop.  So now I need to create the actual display which is what we will address in this blog post.

Using an old cell phone as a display

Some of you might have guessed correctly that I'm serving up the billboard video from a cell phone.   I've gone through a lot of cell phones over the years and when they get too slow, I replace them with the latest and greatest.  All these old phones inevitably end up in a drawer where they collect dust.   It occurred to me that I could give them new life and purpose by serving as the billboard displays for my cyberpunk city.

I don't have to buy new LED/LCD display panels, I just reuse what I already have.  I'm sure most people will have an old phone somewhere and even if you don't you probably know someone that will give you their old phone.

It doesn't even matter if the screen is cracked or whatnot, as long as the phone will power on, you are in business.

To prep the phone, I did a factory reset on them just to clean them up.   Most phones will include a video app by default and this is what we will use to display the video, which you will recall is in mp4 format. The format is pretty standard across all video players, so you shouldn't have a problem to display the custom video.

Copy the video to the phone

After prepping the phone, you'll need to copy the video file from your laptop over to the phone.  You can either transfer the file via WiFi / shared drive or via a physical USB cable to do a file transfer.  I imagine the process is pretty much the same if you copy files from phone to phone.  I won't go into that too much, as there are lots of resources on the web that address that.   Put the video file where ever it's meaningful to you, such as a Download or Gallery folder.

You should be able to launch the video automatically just by clicking on it, and it should use the phones default video player to play it.   You can either display your video in either landscape or portrait mode as the picture above shows you.

To get the best effect, I crank the phones display brightness to the max.  You want the visual to be as bright as possible, especially if you are displaying it in a cyberpunk city, where you want to achieve the maximum effect. Because we've created a loop file, when you launch the video it should play for the full duration that you set it at.

If you have multiple old phones like I have, you might consider running different videos on each phone.  It's really up to you, how many videos you want in your city.

Creating a brick built stand for your phone

In this next section, we will look at creating the stand for the billboard.  There is no one size fits all stand, so each one that you make is custom fitted to your own phone.  The design is also completely up to you, but I will discuss some of the technical considerations here.

The first thing is the cradle or box, as I like to call it.  That's the brick built part where the phone will sit into.  It should fit the dimensions of the phone and should be bricked on three sides leaving the back and bottom open.  The back is open for ventilation. Not saying your phone will overheat, but just in case. The bottom of the box should be accessible if you want to run a charging cable into the phone as an option.

This is what the back looks like.  I just used whatever spare plates and bricks I have on hand.

My Samsung J6 phone inside the box.  The dimensions are 11 studs wide and 20 studs long.

At the top of the box, I've placed some plates to stop the phone from toppling out when I put the stand upright.  Also it will hide any of the phones top widgets.  Towards the bottom of the box, I've used 2 1x4 jumper plates.  This not only holds the phone in, but makes it hides the bottom widgets and makes it easy to pop off, so I can access the phone.

I will typically turn on the phone, launch the video, get it into the desired orientation, then put the phone into the box and secure the plates.

I further customised the bottom plate just to match the Coke ad that is playing.

Finally I constructed the stand in which the box will sit atop.  Additionally, it serves to elevate the billboard. Make sure that it is sturdy enough so that the phone box doesn't topple over.

This is just an example of what I've done, but yours can be whatever design you like. 

Ok that concludes our little tutorial of the animated display.  Hope you've found this blog post useful!

If you'd like to get any of the cool Cyberpunk Lumibricks sets, don't forget to use my affilliate code itsnotlego to save on your purchases from their website:  https://www.lumibricks.com/?ref=tN9EBQmQ

Thanks for looking, bye!

How I made an Animated AI Billboard for my Lego Style Cyberpunk City (Part One)

 

Hey brick fans!

So a lot of you wanted to know how I created my little animation that appears in my Lumibricks (Lego) Cyberpunk city.  Well I'm here to give you the scoop and all it takes is an old cellphone and a bit of your time.

In case you haven't seen the clip, here it is.  It might be a little low res on the blog but it looks pretty good when I uploaded it to Instagram and Facebook (@itsnotlego).

There are essentially two parts to this tutorial: Part One (this blog post) will look at the software aspect, ie creating and animating the image.   Part two (next blog post) will examine how I made the brick built stand that you see in the above picture.

Alright, let's dive right into Part One.

Creating the Image

So if any of you have watched the classic sci-fi movie Blade Runner, you will know there is a scene in the movie where a giant billboard depicts a Japanese geisha eating some kind of candy.  

In another scene, the same or possibly different billboard displays the Coca Cola logo.

For some reason, I imagined that the scene showed the Japanese geisha drinking a coke.  Weird how I came up with that connection.

So using that imagery, I wanted to create an ad that showed the geisha drinking a coke.   The app or software I used was CapCut's Dreamina AI tool.  I used the test to image generation utility.  Link to the product info can be found here:  https://dreamina.capcut.com/tools/ai-image-generator-from-text

Sign up for a free account and you can use each day and you get 150 credits to play around with.  The tool lets you create either images or short 5 or 10 second video clips.   Images cost 3 credits each but videos vary in the number of credits used.  

Dreamina provides resources on how you can learn to create your own images: https://dreamina.capcut.com/resource/how-to-create-ai-images

It's pretty easy to get started and like anything you have to get used to AI prompting, but it's pretty intuitive.

Just keep playing with it and refining it until you get an image you are pleased with.  If you use up all of your credits for the day, you can resume your work the next day with another free 150 credits.

Eventually this is the final image that I settled with.  I took a screen shot of the prompt as well.  You can even spend some credits to upscale the image to HD, which I would highly recommend.  The file is saved in jpg format.

Generating a video

Once you are happy with your image, you can download a copy to your phone or laptop (I'm using a macbook).  If you look further at the settings, you'll notice a Generate Video feature in Dreamina.

You can provide the image you just created to the video generation tool, and again, you create an action prompt on how to animate the AI image.  In my case, I prompted the geisha to lift the bottle to her lips and then bring it down and turn her head to look at the camera.  

If you already have an existing image from somewhere else, you should be able to use that too. Check the Dreamina resource page on how to do that.

If I remember correctly, I was able to generate either 2 versions of video before running out of credits. Each time I generated a new video, it cost me 65 credits.  A tip is to really plan out what and how you want animation to look like to maximize your credit usage.

In the free plan that I used, you are limited to either a 5 or 10 second video clip.  Once you are happy with the clip, download a copy of the video to your laptop or phone.  The file is saved in mp4 format.

Looping the Video

So with my 5 second clip, it looks great, but now I want to loop it and keep displaying it for a predetermined amount of time.

So I pulled up another free tool, called Canva which is an image and video editor. Just sign up for a free acoount.  In Canva, I created a new Project and uploaded my video to it.  Like other video editors, Canva displays the video clip on the timeline.  Now it's simply a matter of duplicating the same clip over and over on the timeline.  I kept duplicating it until the timeline hit about 5 mins in duration.   Now, save the new file separately so you don't clobber the 5 second clip.   Make sure you save the new clip in mp4 format as well.

So in my next post, we will talk about importing the looping video onto a display device (which is actually an old cellphone!).

Update: Here's part two of the tutorial: https://bricksandfigs.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-i-made-animated-billboard-for-my.html

For those of you interested in the awesome Lumibricks Cyberpunk sets, you can find them here: https://www.lumibricks.com/?ref=tN9EBQmQ

Use my affiliate code itsnotlego if you want to save some money!

Thanks for looking, Bye for now!

Wrapping up the mods for the Xbert 66055 Ohsojang's Antique Shop (Part Three)

 

Hey brick fans, welcome back to the final installment of upgrading the Xbert 66055 Antique Shop that was designed by Ohsojang/shinjungseub.

As mentioned in my previous blog post (Part Two), I have made further updates to the main floor shop. I started expanding the footprint of the antique shop in my initial blog post (Part One).

Since the updates to the second floor, there were some things I couldn't use, so I've relocated back down to the first floor. I also added a few more items since my first blog post.  In the above picture, I've taken the display case that was originally found on the second floor and moved it downstairs.  I relocated the telephone and put an old school cash register in it's place.  The bookcase behind the counter is a hybrid.  I made a new shelf but reused the books that were from the upstairs.

New items include the grandfather clock, and the knicknacks on the top shelf include a trophy cup, a video camera, a jewel under glass and a telescope.

This is the view looking towards the front doors.

Here's an overhead shot as well.  The OG set came with a tan chair that was placed outside, I've moved it inside and changed it to a dark green seat instead.  The shopkeeper uses the chair when he gets tired of standing all day. There's a lot of space for customers to come in and browse all of the antiques.

I've made the bookshelf easy to remove ...

... to facilitate taking pictures of the inside.

That wraps up our look of the inside. Now lets do one more tour of the exterior.

The front.

The back.

Different angles.

Now that the Antique shop is done, we need to choose who will be the new owner of the Antique shop.  Who would look best as the shop keep?   Let me know in the comments below!

1. Clarence

2. Theodore

3. Winston

Well, that's a wrap!  Thanks for checking out my updates to the Xbert 66055 Antique shop modular building!

If you'd like to get your own Xbert Ohsojang designed Antique Shop, you can get it from Afobrick.com: https://afobrick.com/en-ca/products/xbert-66055-vintage-antique-shop?ref=oGOdUj_izrflQ

Don't forget to use my affiliate code itsnotlego to get another 5% off the price!

Thanks for looking, bye!